October 2012

10/11/2012

Sitting cross-legged under a tree, he looked at her and said, “So what do you miss the most?”

She stared out at the expansive, flat, blue Pacific Ocean and parsed her
thoughts. There were so many of them. After a few moments she said,
“Well, I would first have to say sunshine.”

He gave her a funny look, one of those “you must be kidding” stares. “In
case you hadn’t noticed,” he said, pointing to the cloudless,
infinitesimal blue void above them, “but we have plenty of sunshine
here. We are on an island in the middle of the Pacific, after all.”

“I think technically it’s considered an atoll,” she said. “It rained yesterday, and the day before that, too, so it’s not always sunny here.”

“Yes, and as a result we have a little water. But sunshine?” He held out
a bare arm, once pale white but now nut brown. “This is just in case
you needed proof.”

“What I mean is,” she said, as she lounged beside him, “the sunshine of
home, the early summer sun of the Prairie. It’s different there, not as
brutal as it is here.”

“You mean when you were a young girl, not the sun in Boston or California, I assume.”

She nodded. “And you? What do you miss?”

He took a deep breath and said, “The laughter of children. Here, the
only sounds are the surf and wind—and the occasional wayward bird, which
isn’t all bad. But I miss the musicality of a child’s laugh.”

“Did you ever want to be a father?”

“Oh, there were times. And you, did you ever want to be a mother?”

She gave him a closed-mouth smile. “As busy as I’ve been my whole life, I
doubt I would have had the time needed to devote to children as a good
mother should.” She scrunched her knees under her chin and again gazed
past the white sand beach before them, to the ocean beyond. As it had
been for many days, its surface was empty; she’d become accustomed to
thinking of it as a wide, wet desert.

“I believe you would make a wonderful mother.” He straightened his
legs and laid back in the shade, and covered his eyes with his tanned
forearms. “Perhaps when we leave here, you can have children and maybe
I’ll have some, too.”

“If our spouses consent,” she said.

“I have no doubt, on the happy day we return to our respective homes,”
he said, “they’ll be so overcome with joy they’ll have no choice but to
allow us such indulgences.”

She listened to the waves hitting the beach, something she hadn’t done
in a while. She’d developed a knack for tuning them out, having heard
little else but their relentless rhythms for the past few weeks.

After a few moments, she said, “Are you going to get some sleep?”

“Yes. Doing nothing but sitting around here all day takes a lot out of a man.”